Love of the Land: Weekly Commentary: Palestinian State Without Final Status Agreement Recipe For Disaster

Weekly Commentary: Palestinian State Without Final Status Agreement Recipe For Disaster

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
29 October 09

Who would gain from the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state before an agreement is reached on final status issues?

President Shimon Peres claims that this will somehow promote peace and stability, but he doesn't offer much substance to his argument beyond a "best case assumption" that things will be so good for the Palestinians when they have a sovereign state that they will bend over backwards to behave themselves.

This is a pretty insulting take on the will and determination of the Palestinians to achieve their aspirations.

It doesn't require much imagination to come up with a Palestinian plan of action to exploit Palestinian sovereignty to facilitate increasing security and other pressures against the Jewish State.

And this with most of the world "understanding" if not downright accepting and even applauding the argument that the Palestinians had every right to continue with their "struggle against the occupation" given that final borders and other key issues had yet to be agreed upon.

Israel's enemies would come to the aid of sovereign Palestine on a scale magnitudes greater than current clandestine operations.

Israel's friends would counsel the Jewish State to show more "flexibility" and accept various Palestinian demands, in order to bring peace, arguing that "after going so far and making so much "progress" (aka concessions) it would be irresponsible for Israel to jeopardize this by taking a "hard line".

All this while Israeli security operations would be subject to even greater international review, criticism and even sanctions as they are carried out within sovereign Palestine.

And let's not forget that a sovereign state is a sovereign state even if it should violate the conditions under which it was formed.

When Mr. Peres makes this proposal he shows himself to be more an anarchist than a diplomat.

And the last thing we need in this region is to add to its instability.

Love of the Land: Weekly Commentary: Palestinian State Without Final Status Agreement Recipe For Disaster